1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to connectors for use in, e.g., wire harnesses or the like of vehicles, and more particularly to an improvement in reducing the inserting force involved in the coupling operation.
2. Description of the Related Art
Along with the growing number of circuits employed in automobiles in recent years, demanded as connectors used for wire harnesses are those of a multi-terminal structure. For instance, some high-grade passenger cars equipped with a power window system on the doors and electric devices such as various switches require a connector device with twenty or more terminals for connecting the door side to the car body side.
However, since the inserting force required for coupling male and female connectors together is substantially proportional to the number of terminals, multi-terminal connector devices require a large inserting force at the time of coupling. Multi-terminal connector devices make the inserting operation of connectors in assembling an automobile difficult and tend to increase incidence of defective connection attributable to incomplete insertion. To overcome these problems, various connector devices have recently been designed for reducing the inserting force.
An exemplary connector device is designed so that a lever mechanism is disposed between both connector housings of a connector device and that one of the connector housings is inserted into the other connector housing with a small inserting force utilizing the lever mechanism. However, this design is disadvantageous in that the connector device becomes large in entire structure since the lever mechanism is arranged separately.
Such an arrangement that a connector housing on the inserting side is divided into, e.g., two blocks is also proposed. According to such arrangement, it is ensured that the force of inserting each block will become one-half the force of inserting both blocks at once, thereby simplifying the operation of inserting the blocks. However, since the operation must be performed twice, the problem of increasing the steps in the process of assembling automobiles is in turn imposed.